Art

The first collaboration, born when Maria and Denver were neighbors in walk-up apartments a stone's throw from the Brooklyn Bridge. Maria left a cigar box of hand-drawn images at his door. Denver put words to them, then left those pairings — and ten new words — back at hers.

Handmade wooden boxes holding city photographs lit from behind by small LED lights — quiet, meditative, glowing moments of singularity. Denver's words, drawn from a series of poems each beginning with “in which,” accompany each box and add a dream-like narrative to seemingly unrelated images.

In the earliest, darkest days of the pandemic, Maria texted Denver: “we need to collaborate on something.” Unable to meet, they solved it the way spies do — a physical dead drop, halfway between their two Brooklyn apartments. Maria left a box of found objects behind a wrought-iron fence. Denver found words to go with them and left them back. These exchanges went on all spring. The result: assemblages on wood with burnt matches, graph paper, paint, chalk, and Denver's words — secret messages of light during darkness.